Cali - Truck lane pileup seriously injures 2

NEWHALL - A man and woman were seriously injured Thursday morning when three big rigs tangled with passenger vehicles on the sky-high truck lanes in the Newhall Pass.
Charlana Ragland, 37, of Littlerock suffered severe injuries and had to be pried from her SUV as morning traffic backed up for miles on the Antelope Valley Freeway (14) where it pours into Interstate 5 junction.

It was 8:13 a.m. when the driver of one of three 18-wheel double dump trucks on the transition road lost his brakes, rear-ended another rig, hit Ragland's Mitsubishi Montero, spun out and hit the side of the two-lane route that passes high over the interchange, said Officer Wendy Hahn of the Highway Patrol.

The truck that was rear-ended then jackknifed into a &quot;W&quot; across the lanes, Hahn said. Its driver, Ashour Youkhana, 46, of Northridge also suffered serious injuries as a pickup truck, two sedans and a flatbed tow truck carrying a van hit the wreckage in a chain-reaction.

&quot;They were just everywhere,&quot; Hahn said.

The crash was in the truck lanes from the southbound Route 14 to the southbound I-5. The truck lanes- designed to take big rigs off treacherous stretches of roadway - were shut down for several hours.
Normally, officers recommend passenger vehicles stay off the truck lanes, but in this instance there's an off-ramp to The Old Road, Hahn said.

&quot;We can't restrict access because of the off-ramp,&quot; she said. &quot;But, in general, a lot of car drivers don't realize how difficult it is for truck to maneuver or stop. They can weigh over 50,000 pounds if they're loaded.

&quot;If you cut them off, they can't stop.&quot;

It took more than four hours for the collision scene to be cleaned up and the truck lanes to reopen.

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